LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES – DECEMBER 13: Protesters hold a banner written ‘Hate divides, love abides’ on it as hundreds of Californians, mostly including Muslims, gathered during a protest against terrorism and violence, staged with the attendance of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (not seen), San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis (not seen) and Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department Charlie Beck (not seen) with some prominent Muslims of the society, in front of the Los Angeles City Hall on December 13, 2015 in Los Angeles, CA, USA. (Photo by Mintaha Neslihan Eroglu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Source: Huffington Post

As a Muslim American for the last two decades, my belief in my adopted homeland has grown stronger and stronger with each trial that has tested the determination of my fellow citizens. I felt safer in America than any other part of the world on the tragic evening of Sept. 11, 2001 — but the current rise in anti-Islamic sentiments sometimes makes me uncomfortable.

On the night of the State of the Union Address, I had a barrage of thoughts when I accompanied Congressman John Yarmuth through the power corridors of the U.S. Capitol toward the House of Representatives chamber, where the president would be delivering his speech in the next hour.

I reflected on what the future holds for Muslim Americans as Islamophobia has reached newer heights during this election cycle. I thought about my 8-year-old twin boys who have lived in no other country than theirs and love no other land more than United States of America.

A few of the Presidential candidates have suggested that United States should not elect a Muslim President and have called for barring all Muslims from entering the U.S.

Once I was in the gallery of the House Chamber, I was overwhelmed with the history of this place and space, where our founding fathers debated and outlined the course of an emerging nation. It is here where our Nation’s course is still directed to this day.

During this powerful moment, I had an epiphany about the people before us who had gone through the difficulties and hardships in this land of America.

I heard many voices of sanity pleading the cases of citizens at trial at any given time in history of our country.

Among the heart-piercing cries of thousands of Cherokee children and women on the Trail of Tears, I thought of Davy Crockett opposing their removal from their ancestral lands at the push of white settlers. This great frontiersman was routed by his colleagues, but he contemplated in later years:

I believed it was a wicked, unjust measure … I voted against this Indian bill, and my conscience yet tells me that I gave a good honest vote, and one that I believe will not make me ashamed in the day of judgement.

I thought of the concluding remarks of President Abraham Lincoln during his State of Union Address in 1862, in which he said:

We — even we here — hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

In 1939, more than 900 Jews left Germany to find safe haven across the Atlantic Ocean. But they were denied refuge both in Cuba and U.S. Eventually their ship SS St Louis had to return to Europe with around 254 people, who later on lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis in the Holocaust.

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